I think I remember saying that this race would be so hot it would melt the rubber off your tyres.. Well Mt Crosby lived up to her reputation.. 35 plus degrees on the day.

With my usual navigator on family duty it was time to recruit anyone who had a heart beat and shoes, or enter the solo division. Because I like to chat as I race I thought the solo might be too lonely so I slowly sussed out a few friends. My powers of persuasion didn’t seem to work and it was then I found him.. My 13 year old computer geek/ wanna be music producer son. I didn’t have to look hard as he doesn’t stray far from his computer. The conversation went like this:
Me: ” do you want to race with me?”
Him: “why?”
Me : ” so you can see what I do and because I no one else is available”
Him: ” I can’t run and I get puffed when I ride”
Me: “we will just do it for fun”
Him: “ok, can you listen to this song I just made?”

So I trained a bit more and he.. Well he just played mine craft and made more songs.

Race day dawned and if you have ever attempted to wake a sleeping 13 year old boy you will know it is nearly impossible. Fortunately he woke up straight away, perhaps spurned on by the Russian adventure racers he confessed he had been watching on you tube.

It was already warm by the time we got to the race and while I marked up the map he took selfies and spread GU all over the car. Ride, run,kayak, ride, run..sounded pretty easy.

Like a shot we were off, in the excitement we sped past CP 1, but this was to be the first and only navigational error. We even took a great shortcut through the creek.. A trick my usual nav likes to do (thanks E!)

Bike leg done, the temp was soaring and we started leg 2. By now we were starting to feel the heat and we walked fast, but still had that goosebumpy heat feeling. We hydrated slowly but religiously every 15 minutes or so. It was as we reached the kayak transition I realized we had not packed our bike bottles with electrolytes. A dumb mistake on such a hot day. We assessed our water and drank sparingly knowing we didn’t have any water source until the very last TA.
We couldn’t wait to hit the kayak, however Jacob had trained once in the pool. After flailing about for a bit I concluded a time penalty for missing CP’s would not be as draining as trying to paddle by myself. We grabbed 2 checkpoints and took the opportunity to jump in the river to cool down.

Back to the run on low water and we found two tricky CP’s with ease. After getting number 14 we watched a number of teams trek cross country back to the TA. By all accounts it was very hard going and we elected to take the longer but easy trail back, given our dwindling water supply. I think at this point Jacob said his legs hurt a bit, and it was a bit hot..

Finally last TA and fresh water in our backpacks we set off on the home stretch. I had said to Jacob I wanted to be back by 1230 (4 and a half hours racing is a big ask for a kid) and we found ourselves streaking towards the finish nearly at our goal pace.

12:35 we crossed the finish line still smiling, very hot and thirsty.

Jacob had a great time racing and regaling his tales to the rest of the family. I am proud of his effort but overwhelmed by his good attitude. He has inspired some of my other friends to have a go at Adventure Racing too.

This wasn’t my fastest race, but it wasn’t my slowest either. It was awesome to see so many new faces having a go!It was very cool to have a few of our local riders join us in this race. Well done T’bare and Man overboard!

Also well done to Matt and Amanda at iAdventure for another awesome race. Thank you for the time and effort you put in to giving people a chance to run through the wilds looking for orange and white things.

And next time your friends say “I could never do that..” Tell them about a 13 year old computer geek who did!